New and Collected Poems: 1975-2015

A new book, the first in over a decade, from acclaimed poet Jay Parini

This volume revolves around his deep connection to nature and underlines his concerns about the impacts of pollution and climate change. In these beautiful, haunting poems, Parini writes about the landscapes of mining country, of the railroads of Pennsylvania, of farm country, of worlds lost and families dispersed. He explores faith and how it is tested. He limns the deepest crevices of the human heart and soul. He surprises and moves us.

In addition to a complete volume’s worth of new work, called West Mountain Epilogue, offering more than fifty poems never before published in any form, Parini has collected the very best work from his previous four volumes, the poems, as he tells us, “written in the past forty years that I wish to stand by.’

Lavishly and deservingly praised over the decades for his work as an essayist, critic, biographer, novelist, and, especially, poet, Parini shines as never before in this generous volume.

Praise for Jay Parini

“Jay Parini is one of those writers who can do anything.”—Stacy Schiff, New York Times Book Review

“His poems are fully imagined and highly accomplished. He never fails to astonish with his grace and wisdom.”—James Merrill

“Jay Parini brings to the current poetic scene a classical sense of order. His impeccable poems burn with the tension between clearheaded intelligence and basic empathy with the human condition.”—Richard Eberhart

“This is keen-eyed, thoughtful, artful yet unaffected poetry. I am struck by the honesty of Jay Parini’s desires and ignorances—his forthright longing for transcendence, his forthright fear that it may not happen.”—Richard Wilbur

“[Parini] always leaves room for small delights or for glorious surprises.”—Christian Science Monitor

“Parini is truly a man of letters. He is a biographer of Gore Vidal, William Faulkner, and Robert Frost, among other writers; a poet; and a novelist whose subjects include Herman Melville in The Passages of H.M. (2010). For this collection, he explains, he selected ‘poems written in the past forty years that I wish to stand by,’ works from The Art of Subtraction (2005), House of Days (1998), Town Life (1988), and Anthracite Country (1982). But first readers will discover a set of new poems under the title ‘West Mountain Epilogue.’ In these supple, straight-ahead lyrics, Parini evokes a strong sense of place as he remembers the Pennsylvania of his youth and his ‘very poor’ grandmother who lived so richly on a ‘tiny farm’ in Pennsylvania with her chickens: ‘I used to watch her scattering the grain / like John D. Rockefeller scattered dimes.’ The title poem spotlights the grim truth about Scranton’s ‘soot-rain,’ ‘coal dust,’ ‘white plastic trash,’ and ‘redbrick buildings with their broken teeth,’ while Parini also celebrates ‘Lackawanna light.’ Parini describes snow softening harsh terrain, sleeping outdoors as a boy, innocence, and hope, and he writes ruefully about our present predicaments, in poems such as ‘Some Effects of Global Warming in Lackawanna County.’ He also prophesies: ‘The poetry of tomorrow will not be pretty.’ As for now, Parini offers graceful and wry spiritual reflections in a number of prayerful poems, including ‘Do Lord Remember’ and ‘Blessings.’”—Donna Seaman, Booklist Online

“Admired master of many genres, including novels, biographies, and essays, it is in his poetry that I’ve always felt Jay Parini comes into his own, using his astonishing and wide-ranging talent to mine the deeper ground. In his poetry, we get the full strength of all we admire in this writer: the springs of his lyricism, his keen eye for detail, his absorbing and compassionate curiosity about people and places, an ability to listen and capture the tone of our times, and moral imagination and spiritual yearning that delivers us into a larger way of seeing and being. New and Collected Poems gathers together four decades of work: we follow him from his childhood in coal country to his full maturity in the Green Mountains, a journey that is a pilgrimage to the waters and watering place of his being, and ours. It’s the book I’ve always wanted from this author, the one I will read, reread, and give as a gift to others who care about literature that matters and will endure.”—Julia Alvarez, author of novels, short stories, nonfiction, memoir, including In the Time of the Butterflies, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, and A Wedding In Haiti, as well as several books of poetry, most recently, The Woman I Kept to Myself

Author’s Note

NEW POEMS: WEST MOUNTAIN EPILOGUE (2006-2015)

The Language of MinesSpring SnowOver the RiverWest Mountain EpilogueHomeA Knock at MidnightHis Morning MeditationsSnowday in PittstonA Dream of StonesLackawanna RailA Night in the FieldHappy HourIn the Library After HoursSome Effects of Global Warming in Lackawanna CountyBelow ZeroThe Language of Mines

The Grammar of AffectionHistoriography 101The Grammar of AffectionTo Ezra PoundSong and SkinUnpatriotic GoreThe Lost PoemsToward a Poetics of the Next GenerationPoem with AllusionsLend an EarHunchRevolutionary DaysBitch My TongueAt the OpeningArs PoeticaWoman by the WayThe Interruption of SummerA Single Page

After the TerrorThe ProphetsThe Lost SoldiersOccupied CountrySleeping Through the StormListening to the BBC World Service Late at NightThe President Eats Breakfast AloneDemocracyFish-Eye ViewPeachesHigh SchoolFamily ReunionCovenant in AprilOld TeamsRiseThe Broken NeckLeoThe Trees Are GoneBorges in ScotlandMindPower StationsNear Old Meldrum, After a FuneralThe CrucifixionLate ThoughtsThe Art of Subtraction

from HOUSE OF DAYS (1989-1998)

Stars FallingSwimming After ThoughtsRain Before NightfallThe Lake House in AutumnWillow SongThe Discipline of SeeingA Killing FrostWho Owns the Land?Nature RevisitedHouse of DaysThe Lost ScentAt SchoolKeyser Valley: 1963To My Father in Late SeptemberThe Crow-Mother Tells AllThe Small Ones Leave UsNew MorningAdriftDemonialHouse on FireThe Ruined HouseA Conversation in OxfordGood Friday in AmalfiStill LifeNear PitlochryI Was There

from TOWN LIFE (1983-1988)

The MarinerSyrinxThe VisitorsDifferentiationCropsHistoryGoodnight, GoodnightIn the Sphere of Common DutyReading Through the NightSkiing Home at DuskTown LifeSuburban SwampThe Function of WinterA Lost TopographyPassing Through Vermont on Three MartinisAmericaPortrait of the Artist as an Old ManPortrait of the Artist UndergroundDivine ParametersSolstice, Entering CapricornThis KampucheaAt the Ice Cream ParlorGrandmother in HeavenAt the Ruined Monastery in Amalfi

from ANTHRACITE COUNTRY (1975-1982)

The Sabine FarmBeginning the WorldWalking the TrestlePlaying in the Mines1913The Missionary Visits Our Church in ScrantonThe Miner’s WakeCoal TrainTanyaSnake HillWorking the FaceThe Lackawanna at DuskAnthracite CountryThe Rain SchoolThe Salt LickLearning to SwimBerry-PickingThe Sea LilyAmores (After Ovid)In the MeadowSeasons of the SkinSwimming in Late SeptemberWinter of the DogThis ScryingTo His Dear Friend, BonesSleepersHer SadnessAfter the Summer HeroesThis ReapingSkater in BlueSummer PeopleBlack WeekIllimitable KingdomNear AberdeenHigh Gannet